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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26304526">Enough</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximumdanger/pseuds/maximumdanger'>maximumdanger</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous Relationships, Caleb Widogast's Backstory, Caleb Widogast-centric, Canon Compliant, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, Minor Canonical Character(s), Names, No Dialogue, POV Third Person Limited, Pining, Pre-Canon, Trauma, Travel, Warning: Trent Ikithon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:48:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,209</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26304526</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximumdanger/pseuds/maximumdanger</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A reflection on the tragedy of Caleb Widogast and the miracle of Nott the Brave.</p><p>(See notes for content warnings.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nott | Veth Brenatto &amp; Caleb Widogast, Nott | Veth Brenatto/Caleb Widogast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Enough</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Content warning: Contains some major spoilers for Caleb's backstory. Also contains brief mentions of gore, abuse from mentors, and description of body image. Please tread lightly or do not read if you are uncomfortable with these topics!</p><p>A/N: Hey everyone! I've been sitting on this one for a couple of months but kinda just decided eff it! I'm positing it! Hope you enjoy! These two are my favorite CR dynamic/relationship so I may publish more on them soon ;-)...</p><p>Special thanks to Winterling from the CR rewatch Discord server for her kind review of this work!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>He didn't really like being somebody.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb Widogast was just a name he'd plucked off of some unremarkable man he'd met along the way. He'd told it to the ragged goblin woman that crouched in the corner of a jail cell across from him. She didn't question it, even when the pronunciation didn't quite line up with his tongue. She had no reason to, and he had no reason to question the name she gave him in return. He had no idea at the time that he'd have to keep being Caleb for so long. After the two of them broke out of jail, he'd hoped they would perhaps part ways and he could go back to being nobody. But Nott stayed. So Caleb stayed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It sometimes made him nervous. Even if it wasn't his… real name, it was still connected to him. It was traceable if you looked hard enough. He was still Bren. He pressed the smooth amulet to his chest and hoped that nobody was interested enough in him to keep looking. He hoped they thought he was dead. He sometimes wished that he was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But sometimes he liked being Caleb. That is, when he heard Nott say it in the relative comfort and privacy of a sketchy inn or a dry cave hidden away from the main road. Even if her voice was often scratchy and shrill, it was far better than the smooth and charismatic voices that called him Bren in his nightmares. It had annoyed him at first when her chatter joined the numbers and names and faces and maps and spells floating around his busy brain, but it became a welcome distraction. He couldn't think about who he was if he was listening to her talk about their latest successful scam or the pretty silver buttons on the innkeeper's jacket or the sweetened whiskey she'd snatched off of a bartop while eyes and ears were turned away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grew to like Nott's chatter a lot. He'd once relished the silence and loneliness, knowing he was far away from those who hurt him and far from anybody he could hurt. It allowed him to think and plan and scheme. But silence often allowed him to think far more than he would have liked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Silence was in the noise he stifled in his throat as a wrinkled hand studded with gold rings and blood caked fingernails struck his cheek. Silence was in the mutilated body tied to a chair in front of him, the crimson dripping from its swollen mouth, and the scalpel buried in its chest. Silence was in the tears that slipped from his pathetic eyes as he and Astrid and Eodwulf held each other on the stiff bed of a dormitory, and in a decade of his life lost forever on the stiff bed of an institution. He felt it in the phantom of crystals pressed against his skin and wrathful heat against his face as he watched his life as he knew it burn down to ash and cinders in front of him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He decided that he did not like the silence very much. He much preferred Nott's noise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For all of her chatter, they did not ask each other questions, at least not big ones. There was the question of where they were going and where they would sleep and what scheme they would need to use next, but the questions stopped there. Caleb knew how these things worked. He could not risk giving any answers in return for asking his own questions. He was sure his companion felt the same way. Everybody likes their privacy, right? Not everything must be said to be understood, he thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they turned away from one another as they washed themselves in the cool water of a river, it was with the understanding that neither of them had had the courtesy of privacy in a very long time. He did not ask her why she preferred to cup the water in her hands and bring it up to her curled body, and she did not ask why his stained and dirtied bandages stayed on his wiry arms. Perhaps there was also the understanding that a body is indeed a very heavy burden to bear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb's had once been a tool, fine tuned for mutilation and espionage and spellwork. He often hurt thinking of the things that his body had done, and what was done to his body. He really hated that body. It was now a clumsy and narrow thing, with shaking fingers that fumbled over his books and ribs that stuck out far more than Nott would have liked them to. She didn't say that, of course, but he could see it in her eyes. She wasn't hard to read. Caleb pretended he didn't care about them. He thought how his former teacher would be disappointed to see his hollow body now. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Good.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He was sure Nott did not care for her own physical form either. It scared him sometimes how she spoke about other goblins, but he would not ask her about that. It wasn't his place to do so.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was understood between them what kind of transaction their relationship was. The details would be revealed as needed, but they were not needed now. One day, they would get enough coin and buy the right book or meet the right person and learn the right thing that would fix all of their problems. That day would not come for a long while. For now, company was enough. He watched the warm candleglow that illuminated Nott's face in the corner of an inn, when they sheltered themselves from snow and melted the cold from their bones with warm bread and gravy and spiced wine. He felt the curve of her spine sticking into his bony ribs, the rise and fall of her chest as they passed the day away in a deep slumber after weeks of non-stop travel. He heard the rumbling purr of Frumpkin hiding against his chest after a frantic and half-starved Nott threatened to eat the poor creature one too many times.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yes. That was enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He loved her, he thought. It was hard to say for sure what that feeling meant. Maybe it was just their mutual respect and understanding, or perhaps it was something deeper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But when he saw Nott's toothy grin after a successful scam, when he watched her sip slowly from her tarnished flask in the orange glow of a campfire, and when she pressed herself to his frail and shaking form underneath his ragged coat in the cold, unforgiving light of the moons and stars, his memories brought him back to somewhere he hadn't seen in years. He was back in that house in the woods hidden away from the rest of the world, where he'd gazed longingly into the shining eyes of a boy and a girl filled with promise and hope in a time when they were still fully human.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In those moments, he stopped caring about fixing it all. It was no longer them against the world. At least for now, she was his world. He did not need to ask her to know she felt the same way.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading! Please feel free to leave comments with suggestions or criticism, or tell me what you enjoyed! :-)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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